


Let's Go Home

by liberosis32



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (it was totally romantic ;D), 12x12 Coda, Love Confessions, M/M, Supportive!Sam, communication skills, dean ain't sure either, here in fanon anyway, kinda long for a coda but oh well, maybe canon? guess we'll see, no smut tho sorry, platonic or romantic???, that ambiguous "I love you" tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9890321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liberosis32/pseuds/liberosis32
Summary: So Cas said "I love you." Dean isn't sure if he meant platonically or romantically. He could just ask Cas to clarify. He decides to be awkward about it instead.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Phew, so glad I got this up before 12x13 airs!
> 
> With so much debate circling over whether Cas's 12x12 "I love you" speech counts as a confession of romantic love for Dean, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if poor Dean ended up asking himself the same thing. Hence - coda!fic.
> 
> Enjoy!

 

“Let’s go home,” Dean said, still calm, still wearing the brave face and acting like everything was gonna be fine. Because somehow, everything _was_ gonna be fine now.

Everyone was quiet on the way out to the cars.

Everyone was quiet on the drive back to the bunker.

For once, though, Dean wasn’t exactly happy to be in the Impala’s driver’s seat. Sure, it felt reassuring to be in control, up here at the wheel of his baby when he’d felt in control of pretty much nothing for most of the night. Still, right now he’d honestly rather be in the backseat with Cas, who he wanted nothing more than to just cling onto like crazy and never let go. Control was slippery, but –

But.

Cas was solid, Cas was flesh and bone, Cas was here, and Cas was alive.

Yet Cas, like the others, had stayed pretty much silent since they’d stepped out of the barn into the cold, sulfur-tinged night air. More than anything, he’d seemed stunned, and maybe a little apprehensive. Like his survival still wasn’t a sure thing. Dean could only get minute glimpses of Cas whenever he glanced at the rearview mirror, and what he saw wasn’t exactly reassuring – Cas just stared out the window, his brow knit together in a strange sort of confusion, his hands clenched into anxious fists in his lap.

“Dean,” Sam said hurriedly, breaking the silence, and Dean looked forward again just in time to put on the breaks before knocking into a group of drunk college students crossing at a red light.

“Sorry,” Dean said, and for the first time he really felt the tenseness in his shoulders.

He glanced back in the rearview now that they were momentarily stopped and he wasn’t at risk of running anybody over. Cas seemed to sense him looking this time, because he looked away from the window and met Dean’s gaze in the reflection.

Out of reflex, Dean almost looked away. Their habitual prolonged eye contact had been pointed out enough by others over the years, he’d been trying to train himself to just stop it, for fear of people making the wrong assumption. He didn’t look away this time, though. Not after almost losing the connection behind those blue eyes for good.

That thought was enough to, shockingly, make Dean bark out a wild laugh.

Cas tilted his head just a bit, looking just a little more confused than before, and Dean could feel Sam looking at him like he’d gone nuts. The truth was, Dean wasn’t sure he hadn’t gone a little nuts. The blue eyes thought was just so – so –

_I love you…_

“Sorry,” Dean said again, breaking away from Cas’s eyes in the mirror to look at Sam. “I’m just still a little. Uh, on edge, I guess.” 

“You want me to drive?” Sam asked.

“No…” said Dean – again, another habit response. A second later, though, and he knew that wasn’t really what he wanted. “Okay, yeah. You mind?”

“Course not,” said Sam.

The light turned green. They pulled off into a tiny Chevron station; the florescent lights above buzzed with moths and cast a yellow glare across the concrete. Sam and Dean got out to switch places, but when Dean crossed around to the shotgun door, his hand lingered on the latch for a long moment. He kind of really wanted to get in the backseat with Cas, but somehow, despite everything, despite knowing he wasn’t committing to anything, and that sitting in the back wasn’t even close to a big deal…

 _I love you_.

Yeah, Dean was definitely just still on edge. On edge from almost losing Cas altogether, and hell, crossing paths with another yellow-eyed demon. Of course he was on edge.

Dean shook himself out of it and opened the door. He slid himself into the shotgun seat, and as Sam pulled them back out onto the town’s tiny little main street, he found a quiet comfort in knowing he could look at Cas in the rearview mirror as much as he wanted now, without running the risk of wrecking the Impala in the process.

When Cas met Dean’s eyes in the mirror, though, he looked…

He looked just the tiniest bit disappointed.

For some reason that killed just about all of Dean’s reassurance. He looked away from the rearview mirror and stared out at the darkened, passing storefronts, dimly aware of Cas in the backseat, doing the same thing, so as to no longer look at him.

 

 

The bunker door swung closed with a resounding clang, and Dean flipped the light switch. Warm light flooded over the map room below.

Cas breezed right past him and started down the stairs.

“Whoa, hey, what’s the hurry?” Dean asked, and then wanted to kick himself for breaking the silence at all. 

Cas hesitated at the bottom. “I think I need to sleep.” He looked away from Dean, his eyes dancing over the rest of the map room, landing on nothing in particular.

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” said Dean, trying to sound cheerful despite the room full of sudden, inexplicable awkward. “Go conk out, take some recovery time. You deserve it.”

Cas didn’t really answer, just did this odd little motion that wasn’t quite a shrug and wasn’t quite a nod, and disappeared down the hallway that lead to the bedrooms. 

For a moment Dean just stayed there on the top of the stairs. Reflecting uncomfortably that he didn’t feel as safe and relieved as he’d thought he would, being back home, behind a locked door and God-knows how many layers of warding.

Sam came in a moment later, carrying a number of weapons from the trunk that were past due for maintenance and cleaning. “Just got a text from Mom,” he told Dean as he passed.

“She coming back tonight?” Dean asked, not really even daring to hope.

Sam stopped at the bottom of the stairs, just like Cas had, and looked at Dean with resigned sympathy. “She says she’s crashing over by Wally’s place. Apparently she just now got there to drop off the SUV – “

“So she’s not coming back tonight, then.”

“She said she’d check back in in a couple days.”

“Of course,” said Dean, and he finally stomped his own way down the stairs.

He didn’t like the thought of Mom being out there by herself after tonight, after crossing paths with another yellow-eyed demon of all things. But she’d insisted time and time again that she could take care of herself, that she was handling being out on her own… and while Dean still wasn’t anywhere close to accepting it, he’d known for awhile now that his continued cautions and protests were just getting… well. Annoying.

Dean took a shower and changed clothes, then met up with Sam in the kitchen. They nursed a set of beers in between cleaning the guns.

“Where’s Cas?” Sam asked after a bit.

“Said he needed to sleep.” 

Sam glanced up from the rifle he’d been working over and gave Dean a confused look.

“What?” Dean asked, pausing his own cleaning.

“You just… let him go off to bed?”

“Uh… yeah?” Dean felt suddenly defensive. “He said he was tired.”

“He almost died tonight.”

“Jesus, Sam,” said Dean, and he picked up polishing the rifle with added gusto. “You don’t have to tell me, believe me, but it’s over and there’s no point to keep dwelling on it – “

“You know as well as I do, a night like he’s had, that’s traumatic.”

“So he’s gonna go sleep it off – “

“You haven’t talked to him at all since we got in, have you,” Sam said, looking at Dean with something like contempt. “The whole ride home, too, you just left him in silence – “

Dean stood up swiftly and retreated to the fridge to grab another beer, even though he still had about a fourth left of the last one to go. “Instead of pointing fingers at me, you ever think maybe you should be the one to talk to him about it? You’re his family just as much as me, and – and anyway, you’ve always been better at the whole ‘therapy session’ thing, and – besides that – _besides_ , he – mmnph…”

Dean cut himself off before he could ramble any further. He let his face sink forward into the cold refuge of the fridge, noting detachedly that his skin felt hot and flushed.

Behind him, Sam said, “Dean. Are you…?”

“What. Am I what, Sammy?”

“Are _you_ okay?”

Dean thought about how he ought to answer that. His instinct was to just turn around with a wide, brimming smile, and say, _Yeah, I’m peachy. You want another beer, too?_

Except somehow, for some random, impossible reason, his brave face was cracking, and he couldn’t seem to stick it back together.

Behind him, he heard Sam scoot his chair back and stand up. “Dean? Hey – “

“I’m fine,” said Dean, but he didn’t turn around to look at his brother. He knew his voice was betraying him, and he didn’t want Sam to see his face exposing him even more.

Sam’s hand landed on his shoulder, and Dean shivered just slightly at the dim, blurry memory of another hand in the same pace, burning ice against the fires of Hell, all that time ago…

“He’s okay,” Sam said. “We made it back, and he’s okay.”

“I know,” said Dean, and now, dammit, his voice was shaking.

“We’re gonna be okay, Dean.”

“I know.”

Except he was still having too damn hard of a time believing it. He was still friggen on edge, for no real reason at all. God, he felt like he was having a damn heart attack or something…

Sam took his hand away and took a step back. Dean composed himself as much as he could before turning around and brushing past Sam. His intention was to go sit back down at the table, to dive right back into cleaning guns and hoping like hell it would be enough of a distraction to break this ridiculous cycle. But as his hand landed on the back of his own chair, intending to just pull it out and sit down, just that one, inconsequential little motion, that one little choice... 

Dean thought back to earlier that night, when he’d almost moved to the backseat of the Impala, and ended up riding shotgun for reasons even _he_ knew were ridiculous. 

He let go of the chair. Without looking at Sam, he said, “I think I’m just gonna go check on Cas. Just real quick – I’ll be back in a minute.”

 

 

When Dean knocked on Cas’s door, it sounded both too loud and too quiet at the same time. It was an awkward sort of volume, but Dean did his best to swallow down his discomfort when he heard a rustle of blankets, followed by Cas calling, “Come in.”

Dean opened the door. Cas was sitting up in bed, illuminated by the dim bedside lamp, wearing a Metallica t-shirt Dean had loaned him some time ago for nights like this. Cas didn’t need to sleep very often, but he’d had to after that whole fiasco with Ishim (Dean was still mad at that bastard for nearly draining Cas’s grace to heal his own evil ass).

“Hello, Dean.” Cas didn’t sound annoyed, but Dean lately worried he wasn’t always the best judge.

“Uh – “ He shifted his feet. His throat felt suddenly dry. “Hey, Cas.”

The silence had come back. Swift and unexpected, it seemed to smother the room.

Cas, always one to resist, fought back. “Did you need me for something?”

“I just, um. I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay.”

“I’m a lot better than I was a few hours ago,” said Cas, a small smile quirking up at his lips. Dean worried it seemed a little forced.

“Right,” said Dean, nodding. “Yeah.”

“Was there…?”

“No, no, nothing else,” said Dean, and he took a stutter step back out the door. Then, at the slight note of disappointment he thought he maybe saw in Cas’s eyes, he stopped. “Or, um, actually. I was thinking, if it doesn’t bother you… I could maybe just, stay in here and… read? For a little bit?”

Now Cas knit his eyebrows together. “Read?”

Well, now Dean had gone and dug himself into a pit. Since when did he ever just sit and read unless he was begrudgingly trying to research something specific?

“Yeah, it’s just that, um…” Dean quickly racked his brain for some excuse as to why he had to come read in here as opposed to the library, the map room, or his own room, on top of why he needed to be reading at all. He came up blank.

“Of course you can,” said Cas, and Dean felt the knots in his shoulders relax just a little in gratitude. Still, though…

“I don’t wanna keep you up or anything,” said Dean, giving Cas an out just in case.

Cas shook his head and reached over to turn on the second bedside lamp, smiling just a bit wider this time. Dean hoped it was genuine. “The light doesn’t bother me.”

 

 

After going back to the kitchen and letting Sam know he was gonna call it quits on weapon maintenance for the night, he stopped by his own room and grabbed a relatively new copy of _Slaughterhouse Five_ to take back to Cas’s. He’d never been able to keep books around before they’d moved into the bunker permanently – they took up too much space in Dean’s opinion, though Sam had always found arguments for keeping them. Tonight, Dean was just glad to have something besides anatomy books on werewolves and Enochian translation dictionaries to browse through.

He wasn’t sure if he was a bit sad or relieved when he got back to Cas’s room to find him asleep. On the one hand, those things Cas had said, back at the barn…

On the other, it was just good to be here with Cas, and to know he was safe. 

Admittedly, Dean didn’t do much reading that night. He kept trying to get lost in the book, but instead he kept finding his gaze wandering over to look at Cas, asleep and silent beneath the warm wash of the bedside lamp.

Dean wondered if this was how Cas had felt all those years ago, when he’d watch Dean sleep. Safe, because Dean was safe. Then again, they’d hardly known each other at the time, and Cas had still mostly been Heaven’s automaton… 

_The thing’s we’ve shared… they’ve changed me._

Then Dean remembered how creeped out he’d been by Cas watching him sleep, and looked away, frowning.

He decided the light probably _was_ bothering Cas, even though he’d said he didn’t mind. Dean switched off both lamps and left the room, quiet tension knotting his shoulders right back up the second he stepped into the hall.

 

 

A few days later, Dean was seriously beginning to wonder if he’d been hexed or something.

He couldn’t stop feeling jumpy and nervous. His neck and back had started to _hurt_ ; they were still so tensed up. And every time Cas so much as looked at him, he nearly dropped whatever he was holding, and he always managed to make a stuttering ass of himself.

A couple of times he _had_ dropped what he was holding: the victims included two coffee mugs, a box of salt he’d been using to fill bullets, and his toothbrush.

The toothbrush had probably been the most awkward of the incidents. Apart from showering, Dean was never gonna go through his morning routine stark naked again.

He kept dreaming weird things, too. At this point just about anything Dean dreamed was probably weird by normal-people standards, but he couldn’t manage to pin down why he kept dreaming about Purgatory of all things.

Specifically, those last moments, when Cas had told him to _go;_ when he’d been forced to leave and just carry on without…

_I’ll hold off Ramiel as long as I can…_

Dean tried to rebury the memory, but for some reason he was having a lot harder time doing that these days.

One morning, Sam walked into the kitchen when Dean was in the middle of mixing blood in with some herbs to do a sort of intensive cleansing ritual, and gave him a look that quite blatantly said, _It’s too damn early for blood spells_ …

“Uh, Dean?” He’d stopped in the doorway. “What’s with the, um – ?“

“I think I’m carrying around a hex or something.”

Sam gave him another weird look, but shrugged it off and went on to the fridge to grab some eggs. “What makes you say that?”

Dean wasn’t quite sure how to answer. He kind of shrugged at Sam and went back to grinding up a bunch of sage. “I dunno, I’ve just felt… “

Cas suddenly appeared in the door, and Dean dropped the bowl he was holding. Blood and ground up flowers spilled all over the floor.

“Dean, are you okay?” Cas asked, stopping abruptly on his way to the coffee pot.

“No,” Dean snapped, then caught Sam’s wide-eyed look out of his peripheral vision, and wished instantly that he’d kept his silence. “I mean, yes. I’m just… on edge, still.”

The “still” had just kind of tacked itself on there.

Cas wrinkled his brow and started to say, “What do you mean, still?” But Dean was already leaving the room to go find the broom.

 

 

“Cas is okay, man,” said Sam later that afternoon, a bit more intensely than usual, and Dean instantly regretted asking if anyone else wanted to come with him to get groceries.

“I know he is,” said Dean, piling five containers of maple-glazed bacon into the cart.

Sam put them back and exchanged them for the flavorless ‘lean’ kind instead. “Do you?”

Dean knew Cas was off a few aisles away looking for that one particular brand of honey he liked, but for some reason he still felt anxious about him overhearing. 

“Look, I’m just carrying around some bad mojo or something right now,” said Dean, pushing the cart into a new aisle. “Probably picked it up from some janky cursed object at Yellow-Eyes 2.0’s place. It’ll either just go away on it’s own, or we’ll – “

“I hope you’re right, because if this is about Cas dropping the L-word – “

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?” said Dean, whirling around to face Sam. His voice had jumped at least half an octave, and he’d let the cart ram into a stand of giant Doritos bags. At least half of them tumbled onto the floor.

Sam’s eyebrows shot up and he took a step back. “Defensive much?”

“I’m not defensive, it’s not about that at all,” said Dean, and he knelt down to start re-stacking the Doritos, hoping to avoid attracting attention from well-meaning but otherwise annoying employees. Or, maybe just to avoid looking at Sam. 

He could feel his neck heating up.

“Dean,” said Sam, and it was almost worse that he didn’t sound mocking. “He – “

“Do we have to talk about this here?’ Dean hissed, because he’d just seen Cas turn the corner on the other end of the aisle, honey in hand. He was smiling and headed their way.

Sam hesitated for a moment, but then, bless him, said, “Okay.”

 

 

When Dean finally got around to trying again, the cleansing ritual did absolutely nothing to help. In all honestly he hadn’t really expected it to.

Eventually, after close to a month of too-tense muscles and multiple incredibly awkward bouts of private soul-searching (gah…), Dean decided he just couldn’t stand to keep mulling all this over alone in his own head. It was making him crazy.

He reluctantly decided to talk it over with Sam after all. 

Except, while Dean was beyond thrilled that Cas was living with them in the bunker now, and coming with them on most hunts… it had somehow gotten damn hard to get Sam alone. Or at least, alone someplace without the fear of Cas walking in or overhearing.

Which probably shouldn’t have felt like such a big deal. Dean knew on some level he was being ridiculous. Not that it made things any easier.

Then, finally, came a run of the mill salt n’ burn in Oklahoma, where for just a little while Dean had Sam to himself. The ghost was gone, thanks to Cas going back to covertly dispose of some saved baby teeth, while Sam and Dean had it out with the little girl’s spirit in the kindergarten class she’d been haunting. On the drive back to pick Cas up, Dean realized with a flash of nerves that now was as good of a time as any. 

He really needed to just bite the bullet here.

“So,” said Dean finally, keeping his eyes fixed right out on the road, even though there was practically no traffic. “So.”

Sam gave him a funny look. “So…?”

“So how bout them Lakers?” Dean said, laughing a bit awkwardly.

Sam just stared at him.

Biting the bullet was apparently easier said than done.

Dean sighed and forced himself to just _talk_ already. “Okay – I’m not trying to be all fluffy girl sleepover gossip here, okay? Just – I just need your nonjudgmental opinion on this one thing, and then we’re gonna never bring any of this up again – “

“This is about the ‘I love you’ thing,” said Sam, sounding vaguely annoyed.

Nerves jumped in Dean’s chest. “I said nonjudgmental – “

“Dean,” said Sam. “If anyone’s being judgmental, it’s you. And for no reason at all.”

That was really the heart of his question. “So,” said Dean, trying not to let his disappointment show. “So you think he just meant it, like, platonically.”

“Either way, he is your friend,” said Sam. “And eventually even Cas is gonna start picking up on how uncomfortable you’ve been around him lately – “

“Cas isn’t making me uncomfortable.”

Sam didn’t look like he believed that for a second. “Really.”

“He’s not!” Dean protested. This wasn’t going the way he wanted. “He’s – I don’t know.”

“Let me guess. You’re still just ‘on edge.’”

“Yes.”

“What do you really want me to say here, Dean?”

Dean frowned and tried unsuccessfully to corral his thoughts. He got distracted when he saw the sign for the street they were supposed to be turning down to meet Cas, then felt a stab of frustration when he realized his time to say what he _meant_ was almost up.

“The best I can put it is that he’s…” Dean tried really hard to pin down exactly what he’d been feeling, exactly what was making him lose his composure every time he and Cas were in the same space. “He’s…”

“Don’t strain yourself – “

“He’s making me _nervous_.”

Sam looked at him in surprise, immediate followed by inquisitiveness. Dean felt tenser now than ever, his stomach twisting up to join the knots in his back.

“Nervous how?” Sam asked with a note of pointed suspicion.

Dean didn’t answer. 

“Dean.”

“I just wanted to get your opinion,” said Dean tersely, because if he used any other tone he was almost positive his voice would start shaking. “On whether he meant it platonically – you know, to all of us. Or, um.”

“To you,” Sam said, understanding dawning in his voice.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Dean, looking into his rearview mirror so he wouldn’t even have to see Sam in his peripheral vision.

“I’m not saying it is,” said Sam a little too lightly. He huffed a little laugh. “I actually thought you were uncomfortable _because_ you thought he meant it romantically.”

“Like, I’m not – “ Dean meant to clarify that, no, he was not gay. What came out was, “It’s just… it’s _Cas_.” Then, “It’s just Cas.”

Somehow that managed to convey everything all at once.

Dean relaxed just slightly within the feeling that, for once, he’d actually communicated his exact emotions successfully. Or about as close as he’d ever come.

“Turn here,” Sam said suddenly, when Dean almost missed the road that led to the little Gas n’ Sip service station where they’d told Cas they’d pick him up.

Dean managed the turn just in time, narrowly evading an oncoming pickup truck. He reflected that all this ridiculous angst was interfering with his driving skills, and that wasn’t gonna fly. This needed to get friggen _resolved_.

“So what do you think?” Dean asked, slowing down and waiting for a car that was about to leave its parking space.

“First of all, thanks for telling me,” said Sam. “I know you don’t like to – “

“Oh, come on, cut it with the sissy stuff,” Dean said. “Really. Just, what do you think?”

“I think you should ask Cas.”

Dean gave him a deadpan look. “Well, you’re tons of help.”

“Really, man,” said Sam, not fudging under the glare. “I don’t know which way Cas meant it, and it’s been long enough at this point, I wouldn’t trust my memory on the details. I mean, that whole night’s just this awful, messy blur of Cas almost – sorry.”

Dean had actually flinched at the reminder.

The car they’d been waiting on finally managed to work its way out of the space – it was either some feeble old lady driving, or an overcautious sixteen-year-old, judging by how careful they were not to rub against the motorcycles on either side of their Ford Focus. Dean pulled in and had just put the Impala in park when he saw Cas coming out of the store to meet them, head held high and a smile on his face. Lucifer’s devil-baby aside, Dean couldn’t help but think he seemed more at ease these days.

“What if I make it weird?” He asked Sam, keeping his eyes on Cas.

“You won’t,” said Sam. “Either way… he _does_ love you.”

There was just enough teasing-little-brother in Sam’s tone there, Dean had no choice but to reach over and smack him. They were both smiling when Cas got in the car and offered them both free blue drinks, courtesy of the store since Cas had apparently just waltzed in and immediately known how to fix their malfunctioning slushy machine.

Dean laughed at the oddball moment of good fortune. Sometimes good things did happen.

 

 

Cas wasn’t sleeping now that he’d gotten rested all the way back up following that disastrous hunt with Ramiel, but whenever Dean and Sam went to bed he’d taken to staying in his own room, just to stay in keeping with their habits. Usually he did research or, if there was nothing particularly pressing on the horizon, he’d waste time watching Netflix while he waited for Dean and Sam to wake up again. Dean knew all this from little conversations he’d had with Cas here and there. Also from the handful of times he’d shown up to Cas’s room at night, just to shoot the breeze for a bit.

The unspoken agreement was that Dean still woke regularly from nightmares, and when he couldn’t fall back asleep, he would come distract himself with Cas instead of wandering around the bunker alone or, God forbid, waking up Sam.

There was a certain ease to it. Or at least there had been, before the ‘I love you’ and Dean’s ongoing panic attack at the whole prospect.

The night after Dean’s talk with Sam, he knocked on Cas’s door for the first time in awhile. He’d been psyching himself up the whole rest of the day to do this, but – well, the volume of the knocking felt just as awkward as the last time.

Cas called, “Come in.”

Dean steeled himself and opened the door.

Tonight, unsurprisingly, Cas had gone the research route. Probably trying to dig up more info on Nephilim, though Cas had explained more than once that even within common angel lore, most mentions of the creatures were obscured out of taboo.

“How’s it coming?” Dean asked, leaning against the frame.

Cas looked up from his book. “Not too well, to be honest. But we’re bound to find something useful at some point, so…” He gestured toward the book. “Might as well try and make myself useful in the mean time.”

“You’re always useful, Cas.”

Cas looked at Dean with something like surprise, and Dean told himself to stop with this sudden impulse to flirt-via-flattery. This was Cas, and that wasn’t their dynamic.

Also, Dean still needed clarification on some things.

He was tempted to just come out and ask, like Sam had suggested. Just keep it casual. Bite the bullet. Not make it a whole Conversation.

Instead Dean ended up beating around the bush without really meaning to and said, “You wanna come take a drive?” Then, off Cas’s look of increased surprise. “With me? I mean, you don’t have to if you’re busy or whatever, but – “

“Of course,” said Cas, looking puzzled now as he stood up and reached for his coat.

 

 

Dean knew he was just making this whole mess more and more awkward for himself the longer he kept procrastinating, but he just couldn’t make himself come out and ask. Instead he wound up going on and on about everything under the sun, just talking away, and only now and then giving Cas space to cut in with a nod or a word of agreement. He was breaking all the rules of courteous conversation, and he knew that, and it sucked. Not to mention he was setting a bad example for Cas. The dude was quiet most of the time, but what if listening to Dean ramble on made him decide the protocol for human conversation in general was to just spew nonsense out of your ass for hours, while your listeners were held captive in the front seat of your car?

Except, Dean had to remind himself, Cas had been on Earth for close to a decade now. Minus a few brief intermissions like Purgatory, or last year, when he’d been possessed by Lucifer and spent most of it unconscious.

That wasn’t a train of thought Dean wanted to go down, though, so he forced himself to start alluding to various things, in hopes of getting Cas to bring up the ‘I love you,’ on his own. Embarrassingly, this led to a discussion on various dying-love-confessions Dean had seen in movies, which ultimately dragged them both down a rom-com rabbit hole. Everything from _Say Anything_ to _When Harry Met Sally_. Cas actually offered up some opinions on these, courtesy of Metatron’s pop-culture brain dump, but a part of Dean was still internally cringing through the whole thing. This was getting ridiculous.

When the first tendrils of a pink sunrise leaked into the horizon, Cas interrupted with, “Dean. Not that I haven’t been enjoying this. But why are we in South Dakota?”

Sure enough, they’d just past the state line marker: a picture of Mt. Rushmore framed by the words “South Dakota” and “Great Faces Great Places!”

Dean felt really, really stupid. He’d managed to waste Cas’s entire night dragging him on a pointless drive across Nebraska, babbling away at him like some kind of obnoxious parrot. No wonder Mom thought he was too needy to be worth sticking around.

“We should probably turn back, huh?” Dean said, the defeat already weighing on him. 

Cas frowned. “If that’s what you want to do, you should let me drive.”

“I’m still good,” said Dean, but even as he said it he could feel his eyelids drooping.

Not long after, they pulled off onto the shoulder of the long, empty road to switch places. When both Dean and Cas were out of the Impala, moving around the front, Cas held up a hand to Dean’s chest, stopping him.

More seriously Cas asked, “Dean. Why did we drive out here?”

Dean stared at Cas, conflicted.

The words right on the tip of his tongue, threatening what he feared would be an irreversible change from this beautiful thing they had just as they were.

Dean hadn’t had many friends in his life. Certainly none like Cas. 

He didn’t want to risk that. Of course he didn’t.

And yet…

Yet he knew if he said nothing now, this impossible tension, this sense of discomfort and wrongness and _not knowing_ would spoil what they had together all by itself. The question in Dean’s heart wasn’t going to go away on it’s own, as much as he might like it to. At least by now he’d learned that much.

Dean averted his eyes. “Do you love me, Cas?”

A silence stretched out.

“You know I do,” Cas answered.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them looked at each other.

Finally, Dean couldn’t stand it anymore. “How?”

The silence became pregnant as Cas gathered his words. Then he said, “Dean. You have… the warmest heart. Even when you try to hide it away. You are the best of everything that is good. And despite all that I know has happened to you and you’re family… the way you still find joy in the smallest things…” Cas shook his head, emotional and frustrated. “I’m afraid I’m not making myself clear.”

Dean, his eyes still glued to the ground, had actually felt his face go red. “That’s okay – “

“You are the one who taught me what love is,” Cas declared suddenly. His resolve became firm and unyielding; fierce and demanding. “How could I not love you?”

When Dean finally looked up, Cas immediately locked their eyes. Almost like he was daring Dean to answer, like he was challenging him to so much as try and make a case for all the reasons Cas shouldn’t love him.

The uncomfortable truth was, Dean had so many faults, he’d failed so many times, he’d hurt so many people… any one of his mistakes, hell, any tidbit of _who he was as a person_ could count as a reason for Cas not to love him.

But when Dean found his voice, he didn’t bring up any of that. Instead he found himself saying, “I mean ‘how,’ as in, platonically? Or – " 

Dean barely had time to see Cas roll his eyes before he was downright yanked into a kiss.

In so many ways, it felt impossible. Not just in how much it had taken for Dean and Castiel to finally meet each other here, at this point, but in the sensation itself. All at once, it felt like falling and flying; drowning and swimming; dreaming and waking...

Dying and living.

“Romantically, Dean,” Cas said when they pulled apart.

“Oh,” was Dean’s intelligent response.

Cas frowned; suddenly he seemed worried. He took a step back.

“I… if I misjudged…” Cas looked at the ground; his words came out in stumbles. “I thought I might have, that night with Ramiel, when you didn’t say anything afterwards. But then after awhile things started to get back to normal, so I thought, that’s alright.” He looked back at Dean. “I really am alright if you don’t… I just…but then, tonight, I started to hope that maybe – and just now – mmnph.” Cas actually growled in frustration. “It’s so _difficult_ trying to talk about these things. I’m never going to be good enough – ”

“You’ve always been good enough,” Dean said, and pulled Cas into another kiss.

The hair at the nape of Cas’s neck was soft and down-like against Dean’s calloused fingers, and he smelled faintly of morning. Dean never wanted to let him go.

“Dean…” Cas breathed.

Softly, so soft the words might have been lost to the prairie breeze if his lips weren’t right beside Cas’s ear, Dean finally told him the truth: “I’m in love with you. I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time. And – ”

_You’re my family. I love you…_

Dean laughed. “And thank God you had the guts to say it first.”

 

 


End file.
